A Complete List of Unpleasant Truths
by zombiefeathers
Summary: In which a semi-omniscient being documents the pain and misfortune of others for the enjoyment of the rest of paradox space. [WIP]
1. Preface

_The stories you are about to read are the personal observations of a semi-omniscient creature on a quest to learn all there is to know about the basic truths of existence and being._

_The creature's conclusions are based on the misadventures of a group of about twelve teenage "alien" children with sickly gray skin, sharp teeth, brightly colored, piss-yellow horns, and broken spirits._

_All accounts are exact; however, all data collected from this experiment is merely speculation, conclusions drawn from the miserable lives and afterlives of a bunch of unintelligent children._

_This information has been leaked out to the human race by an anonymous source in hopes to educate and warn the youth of the species with so much potential._

_So without further ado,_

_On behalf of the universe,_

_We are proud to present_

A Complete List of Unpleasant Truths.


	2. 1 aradia

_the first truth 0f the universe is: n0 matter h0w c0nvenient it may 0r may n0t be, there is n0 such thing as gh0sts._

* * *

At first, she couldn't see anything. Everything was white, blinding white, and nothing really was anymore. Not her terror, not her pain, not her last, fleeting glimpse of his name... Nothing was. Nothing existed. Not even her. She understood that, even then.

Aradia Medigo dimly accepted the fact that she had died.

And then, a rush of sound, a blinding flash, and the sense of being thrust forward through a stained glass window and into a sea of death and dust, and the sharp jolt of pain as his anguished cries tore through the living's nice sky. The sound was muffled, far away, and not quite here, but it didn't hurt any less.

She saw him on his knees. She'd never seen him on his knees before like that.

* * *

For the first time in his life, Sollux was sorry.

There had been no remains. He had been that thorough, that destructive, that far gone. There was nothing left to remember her by but the ashes that danced in the wind like she had, not so long ago. He could still hear her laughter, ringing in his ears like the aftermath of the bomb he'd set off. And he could still see her smile, see her dance off-beat to a rhythm in her head.

_"Come on, Sollux! Dance with me!"_

And he hadn't. And she pulled him out into the wind and the clouds that rolled in under a black sky and a switch flipped in his heart and they danced, danced until they just couldn't breathe anymore and she kissed him and made everything that mattered stand still while the world danced on without them.

She had that sort of power over people. She made them feel alive.

He was a little jealous of her. All he could do was make people dead.

"Aradia please... come back... AA... I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

He clenched his fists around her ashes as if he could hold on to her life, maybe find some way to piece her back together, but she slipped through the gaps in his fingers and flew off to be free somewhere without him.

"No! AA, don't leave me! AA! _AA!"_

He made a sound like a sword was driven through his gut, and he doubled over Aradia's final resting spot. His sadness built up in his throat and threatened to stop his breathing, and for a fleeting moment he thought he would have liked it better that way. But then he choked out a sob and a thousand broken tears.

The fury hit him like a truck, out of nowhere. It pinned him against the ruins of what had been his girlfriend's bedroom wall, pinned him like she had so many times before, but there was no love in his fury. He felt trapped and insignificant and so goddamn _powerless._ He'd never felt powerless before.

_"Fuck!"_ he screamed, his eyes sparking, chest heaving, sanity not quite there. _"Fuck everything!"_

There was a burst of red and blue through the smoke as his anger took hold of him, and another burst of red and blue energy erupted from the boy's eyes. The cloud of dust thinned out, if only slightly, and his potentially-deadly fit of rage was comparatively inconsequential: the only evidence that he had he had ever existed outside of the cloud of dust and ashes was a feeble light quickly absorbed by an all-consuming black sky.

And as soon as the rage had come, it had gone. And he was alone.

"Aradia..." he choked. "Please don't leave me..."

"I'm right here," she whispered, kneeling down so that she was level with her matespirit. "Sollux. I'm not leaving you." She put a incorporeal hand on his shoulder. He didn't feel it.

The two stayed where they were for a long time, longer than the clouds and the air and the dust and the ashes, longer than the anguish of the killer and the pain of the corpse. The two were determined to outlast eternity wallowing in their loss and pity, hoping that maybe the deceased would cross back over to the land of the living and they could be together once more.

But she never did, and she never would. They both knew that. They always had.

Finally, Sollux stood up and dragged his feet back home.

* * *

For weeks, Aradia was unable to get through to him, and came to terms with the fact that, though she had been communing with the spirits of the passed for years and years, there wasn't another as far as the eye could see.

There were no such thing as ghosts.

Aradia, however, was a ghost.

Therefore, Aradia Medigo did not exist. She had once, but she never will again.

And she was perfectly 0kay with that.

* * *

In the wreckage of what had been a young girl's home, there survived a hardy little laptop in the farthest corner of the hive. It had been logged on to Trollian, under the handle of apocalypseArisen, and it had been open to a conversation with a girl who seemed to have a fixation of spiders and the number eight. The conversation flashed, indicating to a no one that there was one new message from arachnidsGrip.

_AG: Arrivederci, Medigo._


	3. 2, tAVROS

_tRUTH NUMBER TWO, iS, fREEDOM IS, iTS OWN KIND OF PUNISHMENT,_

* * *

When he looked into her face, he saw boundless confidence, a smug, arrogant sort of beauty, and a smile that only surfaced whenever he was in pain. And, when he was with her, that was all the goddamn time.

Tavros Nitram didn't know why he did, but he loved her.

There was something about the spider girl that repulsed him magnificently, and still he wanted her in the sappy redrom way only fools could ever dream to want. But if there was ever a fool that existed in the entirety of paradox space, it was him.

The girl was spiderlike in every way, shape and form; her torso too scrawny, her arms too long, her legs too gangly. The tongue he knew so well tasted of poison, and Vriska's only perfume was that of her desperation and her lies. She was domineering and manipulative and wrong, always so wrong, and she had eyes that glittered with a sort of impatient malice that chilled him to the very bone. Honestly, his attraction to the lovely Vriska Serket was as much of a mystery to him as it was to everybody else. But did it really matter? In the end, he was hers, and there was nothing and no one who would ever be able to change that. Not until Vriska wanted them too, anyway.

And why would she want them to? Arms linked, panting, posing together at the top of the world, they were unstoppable.

"Ain't it _beautiful,_ Tavros?"

"Um, what is it, that I am supposed to be looking at, that is beautiful?" All he could see was a load of sand and rocks and frustration and emptiness and maybe some streaks of his dirty-umbre blood streaking the mountainside from his still-freely bleeding flank wounds that Vriska had refused to stop and examine.

She threw him a dirty look over her shoulder. "Possibility, dumbass. Look at all that blank empty space. It's a world of opportunity, of hidden riches, of freedom, and puzzles, and treasure." Her eyes lit up at this notion. "Oh, man, treasure. I bet there's looooooooads of it out there. Waiting for us..."

There was silence for a long while. Tavros was too scared to speak, but figured that someone had to do it sometime. Besides, Rufio told him he could do it. And Rufio believed in him.

"Vriska?"

At the sound of his voice, she stopped smiling. "What the hell did you think I was saying was beautiful?"

"Um..."

"You thought I was _delusional,_ didn't you?"

"I, I, I-"

She sighed deeply. "This is the part," she said through clenched teeth, "where you say, 'Oh,_ no,_ Vriska, I thought _you_ were the beautiful one!' This is the part where you try to beg for your pathetic fucking _life."_

"Um, oh, no, Vriska, I thought you, were beautiful-"

Vriska laughed. "You're funny, Tavros, you worthless piece of shit. You're real funny. You couldn't stand up for yourself if you wanted to..."

"I could so, stand up for myself, if I, uh, really wante-"

"But that's why you got me, right? To make you strong. To make you capable. To make you _worth_ something. Yup... when I'm through with you, Tav, you won't be a grub anymore."

"I'm not a grub-"

"No one fucking asked you, Tav! Why do you always have to make things _hard_ on me? Don't you ever think of _anyone_ but yourself, Tavros? Don't you ever think of your own _girlfriend?"_

In a boyfriend-ly effort to get her to calm down, he reached for her shoulder-

_"Stick your fingers up your nook and keep them there."_

He pulled back.

She was breathing heavily now, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, spilling over her face and masking her misdirected rage from her poor boyfriend. She was losing her shit. Why the usually calm, collected Serket was losing it now was beyond him, but she was losing her shit, and she was losing all control over what little she could call hers.

And then, in her moment of chaos and disorder, in his only moment of clarity in months, he remembered.

He was not attracted to her.

He was terrified of her.

He was not the one laying with her in the dead of night.

She was.

She was controlling him.

_She was inside his brain._

But in that moment of clarity, she was gone. And he didn't miss her. He didn't miss her at all.

And then she came back, and he was once again imprisoned to such a delectable freedom.


	4. 3 2ollux

_the thiird thiing you need two know iis that nothiing and no one can be tru2ted, becau2e there ii2 no 2uch thiing a2 kiindne22 for kiindne222 2ake._

* * *

Half of him thought the underwater empress bitch was a shallow, overly optimistic piece of brainless eye candy, and half wanted to take her by the hand and go down with her, letting the sea and the salt and the sorrow fill his lungs as the two of them filled their pails.

In short, Sollux Captor, bellicose bipolar bastard extraordinaire, was confused.

He had no reason to be, considering the meteor should have been almost like home to him, surrounded by his friends and the constant electric buzz their twelve computers and the central transportalizer, a noise punctuated by the occasional sound of a chair being pulled closer to the monitor, a snicker, or another one of Karkat and Terezi's stupid "platonic" fights.

Even then, the one-sided sexual tension between Sollux and the fish girl on the opposite end of the room hung like a pretend curtain of humiliation between the two almost-would-be-lovers.

"Sollux. Sollux. Sollux!"

The raspy voice of his best friend stuck its perpetually infuriated fist into his thoughts and unceremoniously forced him back to reality. "Sollux, you're doing it again."

"Doing what again, KK?"

"You're staring at the cuttlebitch like a lovestruck canine friend-beast with a stick up its ass."

"No I'm not. You're exaggerating."

Karkat's laugh was a harsh and cruel one; almost sadistic, but lacking conviction. "You have no idea how pathetic you look right now, do you? Your chair's done a complete 180 swivel to get you a front row seat to the main feature: that one bitch who's way out of your league. Look, you've completely abandoned whatever the fuck it is you're doing to stare at this girl like she's actually worth something. What is it that you even do all day anyway?" he added as an afterthought, turning his attention to Sollux's monitor and promptly bending over to better fuck up whatever it was he did all day anyway.

Sollux was distracted, watching Feferi smile and type some sort of nonsense into her machine. "How would you know she was out of my league?"

"Not even Nepeta ships you two, dude."

Sollux shot Karkat a sneaky side glance, a smug smile playing on his lips. "And how would _you_ know that, Karkitty?"

_"You shut the fuck up!"_

Everyone looked up from their monitors, if only for a moment, to acknowledge this latest outburst from their respected leader. Most everyone returned to their somethings soon after, but Kanaya rolled her eyes, Terezi shot up from her suspiciously slumped form on her keyboard and shouted "You'll never take me alive!" and Nepeta's amused gaze lingered a while more until the two made eye contact and both looked down, blushing furiously.

"Don't look so smug," grumbled Karkat to Sollux, "you're missing the fucking point."

"Then let me, KK. I think I'd be much happier that way."

* * *

He dreamt once that she was there, and he was walking up to her to introduce himself at last, but when he opened his mouth a web of sticky pink and purple cotton candy rendered his words incomprehensible. His tongue worked furiously to get rid of the sugared shit, but the purple tasted like fish and the pink of distilled perfume and lipstick, and he recoiled at the taste. Feferi looked on at his ordeal, apparently unable to see that he was choking, and he desperately wished that he were dead, knowing that he deserved a lot of bad things but really, paradox space, this seemed kind of harsh.

Suddenly, the cotton candy liquidated and slid slowly down his throat, painstakingly bittersweet. He brought his hand to his mouth to discover that he had eaten the mind honey. There was a burst of red and blue...

And he lost Aradia again.

* * *

"Hi! My name is Feferi!" said the empress bitch with a sickly sweet smile and an outstretched hand. "You must be Sollux. It's reelly nice to meet you!"

He could practically hear the fish puns in her voice. "Hi."

The fish-girl's smiled dropped, and she looked at Sollux carefully through her adorably pointless goggles with a genuine worry that wrinkled her pretty little brow in the cutest way possible. "Oh? Is something wrong?"

"No."

"You're lying."

"I am not."

"Yes you are! I can sea it all on your face, glub! Don't even deny it!"

"Hey, FF, was it? FF, it's sweet that you care, or are pretending to, or whatever the hell it is that you're doing now, but right now I really just want you to fuck off."

"Well, too bad, mister. I'm gonna make you feel better, whether you like it or not!"

"Really now," said Sollux, unimpressed. "That's what you're gonna do."

"Like glub it is! Come on, it's time for a nice long talk about your feelings in the horn pile."

She pulled on the fingers of his hand and walked backwards toward the horn pile guarded by everyone's favorite juggalo stoner.

"Come on, Sollux! Lets go!"

"FF, FF this is nice and all, I guess, but you're wasting your time. I don't deserve your pity and I don't want it, and I barely even know you, I mean-"

Feferi huffed. "Well _obviously_ you don't know me at all, if you think what I'm giving you is _pity._ See, this is why we need the horn pile, Sollux! To get to know each other better! Come on, glub!"

She made a compelling point, as did her enthusiasm and that smile, which, frankly, was starting to creep him out a little. And Sollux, unable to resist reason (or hormonal impulses) followed the girl to the horn pile and began to write his own demise.


End file.
